“Take her away,” commanded the Colonel.
“This is no place for her.” But the
girl clung to Stephen.

“I will stay,” she said, with a tearless
sob. “I must listen. I see it all,
and what he meant, too, that evil man.”

“Master Shurtleff,” cried the Governor,
“I command you to make all this clear to us
at once. If that paper in your hand tells us the
cause of your refusal to marry these young people,
I bid you read it to us immediately.”

The parson, bowing with respect, cleared his throat
and began, premising that Governor Wentworth’s
commands had been his own intention from the first.

“It is a confession,” he said, “made
by one whom many of us have welcomed to our homes
as a gentleman of blameless character and honorable
dealing. Why it was sent to Mistress Royal instead
of to Master Archdale, or the bride, I am at a loss
to understand.”

Elizabeth raised her head with a flash in her eyes,
but anger died away into despair, and she stood silent
with the others, and listened to the fate that fell
upon her with those monotonous tones, each one heavy
as lead upon her heart. She wondered if it had
been sent to her because it had been feared that Stephen
Archdale would keep silence.

CHAPTER VII.

CONFESSION.

“I write without knowing to whom I am writing,”
began the paper, “except that among the readers
must be some whom I have wronged. I can scarcely
crave forgiveness of them, because they will surely
not grant it to me. I don’t know even that
I can crave it of Heaven, for I have played with sacred
things, and used a power given me for good, in an evil
way, to further my own devices, and, after all, I
have not furthered them. I am a man loving and
unloved, one who has perhaps thrown away his soul on
the chance of winning earthly joy,—­but such
joy,—­and has lost it. If any have
ever done like me, let them pity and pardon. I
appeal to them for compassion. I shall receive
it nowhere else, unless it be possible, that the one
for love of whom I have done the wrong will out of
the kindness of her heart spare me by and by a thought
of pity for what was the suggestion of a moment and
acted on—­”

“Skip all that maundering,” interrupted
Stephen. “To the point. Who is this
man, and what has he done? Let him keep his feelings
to himself, or if they concern you, they don’t
us.”

“No, no, Stephen. Fair play,” called
out Governor Wentworth. “Let us hear every
word, then we can judge better of the case, and of
the writer’s truthfulness.”